


The Comb

by PermianExtinction



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Aftermath - Chuck Wendig
Genre: (from either ship), Age Difference, F/F, F/M, Multi, One-Sided Attraction, Pining, Power Imbalance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 15:26:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11420832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PermianExtinction/pseuds/PermianExtinction
Summary: Not long after Rae Sloane's promotion to Grand Admiral, her aide Adea Rite decides to buy her a gift.





	The Comb

**Author's Note:**

> I think it's pretty obvious that Adea was thirsting for Rae in the first Aftermath book, and what happened to make her side with Rax in the end never gets a proper explanation. But I think it could be explained if she got more development. I like Adea a lot -- I liked that she was talented but impulsive, ambitious but vulnerable, misguided and eager to prove herself. Her POV sections in Book One were interesting, and I'm sad we never got to see her side of things in Book Two. So I made it my mission to write some things from her perspective.

The comb Adea Rite hides in a nook of maintenance closet B-3190 aboard the _Ravager_ is carved from the pale blue-white shell of a Mon Cala mollusk. It has twelve pearly teeth as long as her fingers and a handle like that of a painter's brush, inlaid with a disk of imitation gold. The embossing on the disk is a swirling stylization of a sun.

It looks indulgent aboard an Imperial vessel, in contrast to the disposable fleet-issue combs every officer was familiar with. Obtaining it had been a meticulous affair, though the purchase itself was not illegal. Adea has a salary and she can spend it on combs if she pleases, as long as they remain in her tiny private quarters. But that would be reported to her superior officers, which simply wouldn't do. 

Not if it was meant as a gift. 

Buying a gift for someone like Rae Sloane — _Grand Admiral_ Sloane, such an intimidatingly awesome rank as it is — was difficult not only in the details. Adea couldn’t make up her mind if it was a good idea to begin with. It started, as most presumably bad ideas do, as an idle fancy, something to think about when insomnia kept her up, or aches from her leg. 

It _might_ have been the leg. Even though the tissue and bone had been repaired, the nerves had yet to adjust after that rebel scum had blasted a hole through them… after she’d just disarmed him moments earlier. She could have regained the upper hand, but she’d gotten twitchy. Like a damn civilian. 

Which was not a fact she has shared with anyone. Official reports say the weapon had been in his possession, and he’d fired it when she resisted intimidation, and that is true. 

But that knot of phantom pain remembers, as if a hellish spirit curled up in the wound and now lives to spit venom. _You failure, wretch, that was your chance to be a real hero of the Empire, what does she think of you now…?_

Better to lie around inventing ways that Sloane not only forgave her, but appreciated her, admired her diligence and loyalty. Then, inevitably, it became even more than that. At first she was shy even in her own thoughts, but there came times when the strongest distraction would have to do. The pitted scar over the leg seemed far less ugly, the throbbing pain from it less keen, if she imagined Sloane’s hands tracing over it, inquisitive but reassuring while she spoke of her own war stories.

And other things of that nature, which didn’t all bear repeating.

The idea of the gift started from these fantasies, but it wasn’t serious until she found a holo while digging through the Net — not of this particular comb but of one like it in the hair of a Chandrilan diplomat. The woman might have been from the degenerate New Republic but her hair was positively angelic, dark and lustrous and thickly curled. And of course it reminded Adea of the Admiral — _Grand_ , now, don’t forget _—_ and the last time she had been permitted to see Sloane with her hair out, which had allowed for a view of all sorts of other things, and maybe it was a sign of her unremarkable status that Sloane would blithely walk out naked from the shower in front of her, but it was not particularly a bad experience to remember. 

Rae Sloane could look this good, Adea felt, when she saw the holo. Better, even. She _deserved_ to look this good. Thinking about that sort of thing at night did distract from one kind of pain, even as it contributed to another. 

But then actually buying it? Exhilarating, to be sure, but doubts matched her every move. She wasn’t afraid of being caught, since her actual work for Sloane had her digging around far more dangerous corners of the digital Empire. All she needed to do to have the comb delivered was buy it with a fictional identity, an alias of hers, so it could be screened as harmless by some equally low-ranking officer and delivered as a personal affect. But once she retrieved it, it occurred to her how absurd she was being.

How absurd it was, thinking that the Grand Admiral would accept this, that she would appreciate it, that she would understand what the gesture meant. If she did understand it, wouldn’t that just invite rejection? 

_You're making a fool of yourself_ , Adea thinks when she first holds it, and the thought is heavy, like a star, pulling her off course.

The comb sits in that corner of the maintenance closet, barricaded by replacement air filters, for many days.

 

Until it appears in Rae Sloane’s hands, being presented to Adea as she walks into the Grand Admiral’s private office. The sight drains the blood from the girl’s face, so rapidly she wavers on the spot from dizziness. Her heart lets out a despairing spasm.

Sloane asks, “What do you make of _this?_ "

“I’m not sure what you mean, ma’am,” Adea says hoarsely. She clears her throat, clasps her hands together in front of her waist. 

“I mean…” Sloane is gripping the comb by the very tip of the handle, and she has gloves on, which she didn’t always wear these days. Her brow is tightly pinched. She seems wary of the object she is holding. “This comb turned up during an inventory of the B-level closets.”

_But no inventory was scheduled… was it a random inspection?_

“The AP droid who found it said there was a scrap of paper underneath, with handwritten phrases. Mostly illegible.”

_Oh frag._

“But one thing that was readable on it was my own name. Suspicious, wouldn’t you say?” 

“Yes, ma’am,” says Adea, giving a wooden little nod. “It’s very unusual.” 

Thank the stars for her cramped, scribbly handwriting, which Sloane would have no reason to recognize. Everything Adea writes down for her is on datapad. But it was so careless to have left the drafts of the card with the comb. _In appreciation of… congratulations on your promotion… thought of you…_ Everything sounded terrible. That was why she stalled in giving the gift. What could she say to explain herself?

_I think you’re beautiful…?_

“It looks like someone intended to give this to me,” Sloane says, and frowns. “And I think I know…” She sucks in a breath through her teeth and sharply shakes her head. “It’s bad news.”

Adea’s dread is gone, replaced by a melancholy emptiness. She isn’t a suspect here, and won’t have to endure the humiliation of the truth. But instead… “A shame, ma’am.”

Sloane’s frown becomes quizzical as she looks up. “How so?”  
  
“It’s…” Adea gestures with numb fingers. “It’s a _nice_ comb.”

She should have held that back. It was too presumptuous. But Sloane only searches her face for a moment before seeming to conclude something simple, digestible. Adea is younger, more girlish, less familiar with the austerity of military life. Girls like combs. “Hm. Yes, I suppose it is,” she says. “But the best traps are laid with honey. I’m sure you can imagine dozens of ways this could used for _nefarious purposes_.”

Adea closes her eyes and swallows. She can. Poison coating the teeth, activated by follicle oil. Tiny devices planted in the handle for spying, tracking. Miniature detonators for simple, effective explosions. If she wants to get creative she can go on much longer.

Sloane extends the comb towards her aide. “Dispose of this for me,” she says. “Carefully, of course.” 

Adea’s fingers curl around the comb as she takes it. She snaps her heels together, nods, and waits for any further instructions. 

None come. 

She goes out, comes back later when called in for a more routine task, but the comb was not yet disposed of. It lies hidden in her trouser pocket instead, risking exposure if its outline presses against the fabric. She passes by disposal units left and right, but it isn’t as if it really is urgent, as if it really is a _risk_. And once she throws it away, she will never get it back. Maybe, she thinks, she should just keep it for herself. She paid for the kriffing thing, after all. But she knows it isn’t suited to thin, straight hair like her own, either functionally or decoratively. 

For the rest of the day, the comb’s teeth jab into her leg whenever she sits down.

 

In the waning hours of the shift, Adea finds privacy in an area of the engineering sector where the corridors tighten and the walls are crisscrossed with thick pipes. Lighting is dimmer, except where the cramped halls open up into storage bays for spare engine and cannon parts. These passageways are mostly access routes for droids, so they wouldn’t interfere with crew or trooper mobilization in an emergency. But since it isn’t far from the barracks, it is also understood to be the place you could go for a moment’s respite. The troopers who patrol the halls would jerk their thumbs at loafers, say, “You. Back to your station,” but then walk away after that warning.

On a walkway over one of the storage bays, with MSE droids swarming about her ankles, Adea finally removes the comb from her pocket. She tilts it this way and that, watching its pearly surface try to glisten even in this meager fluorescent light. She brushes the tips of her fingers over the decorative inlay. 

Her throat constricts tighter. It had been aching all day, as if a well of gravity had opened up in her chest. She touches her neck with a thumb, presses against it as if that would force the imaginary lump down. 

A few fleet officers she’d met pinched their windpipes lightly as shorthand for distress, dismay, anxiety; “I’m spaced”. It began as referencing the threat of Darth Vader’s ire, which became legendary during the war. But after Endor, with Vader gone, it means something more intangible, just as the memory of the Sith became intangible.

Because wasn’t it the throat that ached when you felt you’d done something wrong? It grew heavy from failure. 

_This is failure_ , Adea thinks. _So what are you going to do about it? Hide in the corner and snivel like a child?_

She wipes her stinging eyes. _Refocus. Recalculate. Reassess._ That was what you had to do when things added up wrong. 

But is that really true in this case? There isn’t some magic formula that would change the way Rae Sloane felt about her. 

Adea hunches against the railing as impotent despair bubbles up inside her. Her grip on the comb squeezes tighter. 

_You just want something you don’t deserve._

Her face streaks with hot salt as she pinches her eyes shut. _This_ , she thinks, _is why you’re not a real officer_. Oh, how she’d wanted to be, but even in the scramble for recruitment towards the end of the war, she flunked the personality tests. For all her skills, she simply hadn’t been deemed officer material. _Too eager to please_ , one result said. _Too emotional._ Better to have her running errands for top brass. 

Despite the humiliation, she almost came to terms with it. Working with Sloane suddenly seemed a far greater opportunity than simply climbing the ranks. Here was a woman with the tenacity to seize the fallen reins of the Empire, to remain staunchly with it when so many were floundering, or worse, grabbing what little they could and making off with it like looters in an earthquake. Those other cadets should be jealous. Where might they be now? Manning tubolasers, herding second-shift troopers about. Stuck at the beck and call of meager, unremarkable commanders. 

So why can’t she be satisfied? 

Only an idiot like her would think she could court a woman like Sloane. Adea presses the side of her fist against her teeth to stifle any noise, but her shoulders quake with hiccups. The worst of it isn’t even rejection, because she hasn’t faced that yet. It’s knowing why she should give up now. Knowing that someone like her would _never_ be worthy of such attention. 

Sickened, Adea slams her hands against the railing. _Refocus!_ her mind snarls. 

She hears a soft snap. 

Feels a piece of the comb in her palm go askew. 

The burst of anger subsides, tamped down by regret. She uncurls her fingers and turns her palm up to look at the damage. One of the end teeth is cracked at the base, dangling like a torn nail. And then, even as she shifts it with the gentlest of motions, it breaks off entirely. 

She didn't realize it would be so brittle. Maybe it was of cheaper material than she'd thought.

Tears continue to slide down her cheeks, but in a distracted, unfeeling sort of way. Briefly, she wonders if she should try to repair the damage. But why bother with that, when Sloane had told her to get rid of it? 

Adea holds the tooth out, and then lets it fall from her fingers to the floor of the walkway. It makes a faint clicking sound when it lands. 

There comes a whirr as a passing MSE-6 diverts from its course. It approaches the discarded tooth and then hesitantly slides its boxy body over top of it. With faint adjustments, it parks itself in place and then opens a hatch on the underside of its belly. 

When it trundles away, the tooth is gone. 

So, as she’d thought, these mouse droids are on debris collection mode. If they didn’t have anything else to do, they were quite efficient at keeping the hallways clean of dust and lint and hair and spilled oil. It seems like the comb tooth wasn’t too big to be recognized as waste. 

Her fingers grip the second tooth from the end, right next to the stump. Yes, why not break them all off, like shedding a flower of its petals? 

_Loves me._

The second tooth cracks away from the base with a good sharp tug. 

_Loves me not._

She tosses the tooth further down the walkway, and lets the the mouse droid chase after it. 

The irony of that little game is that the outcome was already decided. And if you could count, then simple modal arithmetic would tell you whether it would land on _love_ or _not._ Just like it was obvious to tell whether someone really would ever care for you. Despite that, Adea keeps going. It is dully amusing to watch the droid scoot to and fro, collecting the discarded comb pieces, the way a bird in a park might chase after thrown crumbs.

_Loves me. Loves me not. Loves me. Loves me not._ She makes herself breathe slowly. This is fine. In destroying the comb, she is even doing what Sloane had asked of her. Once that is done, maybe she can move on. 

A second MSE joins in to pursue the broken comb teeth, then a third. _Loves me. Loves me not._ Adea steps away from the railing and the droids skitter back, trying to avoid bumping into her shins. She throws a mean-spirited kick at one that gets too close, but it doesn’t land. They are entertaining in their banality, driven to follow simple routines. Just as _she_ should be. No more heroics. No more secret gifts. No more mooning over Grand Admirals.

_Loves me. Loves me not. Loves me._

_Loves me n—_

She casts the last tooth too far and it skids along the floor, right up to the edge of the walkway and then over it, down to the storage bay level.

Adea winces. _Damn_ , she thinks. _I had better get that._

She leans over the railing to check where it had fallen, and her veins freeze with fright.

She’s not alone.

The man standing below her is a bright splash of crimson cloth where everything else is plain navy gray. He is staring right at her, thin lips curled up knowingly, and then he opens his right hand. The pale sliver stands out against the black of his gloves; he examines it and then lifts it towards her with the delicate, chivalrous air of a suitor below a balcony extending a blossom. 

Adea jolts back, clutching the broken handle of the comb. Unless she hallucinated it, she is in the company of none other than the Fleet Admiral. 

It’s so unbelievable for him to be here, and she’d heard _rumors_ that he sometimes eschewed uniform but couldn’t have imagined _that_ red fever dream, that she considers the idea that it truly hadn’t been real. Then she hears footsteps, light, from soft soles.

Just from her surface-level digging at Sloane’s behest, she knows that Gallius Rax is not a man to be trifled with. Mostly because what he is fully capable of is unknown. 

_He’s dangerous._ Or so Sloane told her. He was responsible for the enemy coming to Akiva. And that fact has to be kept secret _for now_ , but it isn’t a mark in his favor.

On the walkway, there are only two choices for egress. Adea glances back towards the corridor she came from, and then ahead.

She also knows that she would be in a New Republic jail if it weren’t for him. The second chance she hadn’t deserved. 

If he’d stood down there for more than a few minutes, he would have heard… 

She steels herself and steps back up to the railing, fully expecting Rax to have disappeared. Her instinct is correct; she can’t see him anywhere. If she’s right about the layout of this sector, she could imagine that he has a route up to the forward hallway entrance. If she wants to escape, she could head further aft. There is a lot of room in a Super Star Destroyer for alternate routes hither and thither.

_Why are you running?_ Because of humiliation? Fear? _Aren’t you tired of those things?_

It isn’t quite calm that falls over her, but it is cold and bright. Adea faces forward and walks, slipping the comb handle into her pocket. 

The halls are empty all the way to the turbolift bank, even though she remembers there being a pair of patrolling troopers on the way in. Adea reaches out to the panel to call one of the lifts, but stops and keeps her hand hovering there, without touching. 

“Waiting for me?” The Fleet Admiral’s voice comes from behind her. The timbre of it send a buzz down her spine that she can’t explain. He sounds amused.

Adea lets her hand fall, and turns. Rax is in the frame of the connecting hallway, and now that long robe he was wearing is in full view. It reminds Adea of the Emperor’s personal guard, who could sometimes be seen in broadcasts of ceremonies and speeches. But their garb was flatly colored, and even in this dimmer light Adea spots delicately stitched designs along the hems of Rax’s outfit, and more intricately layered folds. 

He seems so at ease dressed like this that Adea feels compelled not to question it. But she also wonders if there was more to it. Even the interplay of light and shadow over his features seems precisely posed, like he’d chosen that exact spot to stand. This isn’t casual flamboyance. It’s misdirection, like a magician swirling an outlandishly lined cape to bedazzle the audience’s eye.

_All right,_ Adea thinks. _Let’s see why he’s trying to catch me off guard._

She swallows visibly. “Were you following me?”

He steps towards her, the movement smooth but quite sudden. On instinct, Adea darts her hand to the pocket where the piece of comb is. The side where the teeth were snapped off has a few sharp edges. Enough for it to be a little comforting… 

_Stop it. This isn’t like that time in the palace._

“I was,” says Rax. He halts just a meter in front of her, wearing the same smile as before. Courtly, but piercing. Definitely intended to be distracting. 

“Can I help you, sir?” Adea asks, casting her eyes down.

“If you’re not busy, perhaps. I hope I’m not interrupting any important work.” 

“No, sir. I’m off duty.” 

“But surely you could be called back on duty at any time? Depending on the needs of your Grand Admiral?” 

Adea nods. Is Rax consciously goading her? She had almost wanted to correct him — she’s not _my_ Grand Admiral. She’s _the_ Grand Admiral. “I’m on my way back to the Officer’s Row,” she tells him. 

Rax moves closer still, reaches around her, and presses a hand to the panel to call the lift. “So am I,” he says. “How convenient.”

“Quite, sir,” she agrees. When he is very close, he smells faintly expensive. Perfumed. 

Moments later, the doors slide open. Rax ushers Adea inside with a gesture. There isn’t much room inside the metal cylinder, and Adea deferentially retreats to one of the walls.

As the row of lights showing the passing floors flicks on and off in sequence, the lift accelerating up all the while, the silence feels like it’s building to something. That feeling is confirmed when Rax speaks. 

“Why don’t you bring out what’s in your pocket, Miss Rite?”

Adea doesn’t bother protesting. She removes the comb handle and displays it in her palm. It looks like a museum artifact, now, with its row of sad broken stumps. 

In return, Rax shows her the fragment of the comb he’d caught, the long white tooth. “Bunalli shell. Not the most expensive material. Here, the craftsmanship accentuates its beauty.” He traces his forefinger over the broken edge. “But one cannot do anything about the brittleness.”

“It seems not.”

Rax hummed pensively. “A peculiar activity,” he eventually says.

_Peculiar, am I?_ she allows herself to think, even as her cheeks heat with embarrassment. _And_ _do you usually wander the bowels of the ship in your dressing gown?_ She isn’t sure it’s a dressing gown. 

“I was ordered to destroy it,” she says. “Discreetly. The methods weren’t specified.” She reaches for the tooth, grips the end between her fingers. It slides out of Rax’s grip; he isn’t quite holding on, but he isn’t exactly letting go.

“Ordered to destroy it?” he asks. For a moment he doesn’t sound quite so knowing. Like that actually surprises him.

“It’s a long story, sir.” Adea tightens her grip on what’s left of the comb, wishing it had all been thrown away by now. Melancholy returns, even in the midst of this uncertain situation. “Sloane thought it was dangerous. It isn’t dangerous,” she adds swiftly.

“I would hope not,” Rax says, in honeyed tones, “since you were the one who had it delivered to the ship.”

Adea flinches. Is she in trouble over this? Will he try to blackmail her? Technically she falsified Imperial documents, even though it was for relatively harmless reasons. And yes, the fleet is in hiding, but the shipping lines haven’t entirely deteriorated yet. If they aren’t secure, that isn’t _her_ doing. She just was so used to poking around at this point that she doubted something this small would get caught.

But how _had_ she been caught?

The lift slows, halts, and the doors open. Adea’s eyes widen when she realizes they aren’t on the main level for the officers’ quarters. The lighting is warmer, golden, as opposed to the plain white any Imperial would be accustomed to. The patterning on the metal walls is more pleasing to the eye. Instead of smelling like grease and floor cleaner, the air is fresher, too, with the hint of floral accent she’d caught on him earlier far more prominent. 

“This…” she begins. “This isn’t my—”

“I am sure that the Grand Admiral misunderstood the situation,” Rax says and then, to Adea’s momentary bewilderment, he places a hand on her shoulder. “But your methods _were_ unsanctioned. All that for a comb, too.”

Perhaps he’s assuming she bought it for herself. _He must think I’m frivolous_. Then she glances once more at his long, lavish robe, takes in the scented air, and decides that might not be the case. But is he comforting her, thinking she’d had to destroy something she desired?

Maybe he’s right about that, in a way. 

“They were also impressive,” he continues, his voice becoming even more silken. “Sneaking an object from the Core aboard this ship, just on a whim?” 

“Yes, sir. I’ve been told I’m rather resourceful.”

She catches sight of Rax’s sharp gaze flicking over her. Like a thousand tiny, hair-thin needles pricking her flesh. She gets the sense she has said something interesting. 

“And could you do so again,” he says at last, “in service of something greater?”

Pieces fall into place — not all of them, but enough for Adea to see the shape of the puzzle. Rax has some unorthodox plan that he wants to make Adea a cog in. He wants her talents. She considers what this might mean. On the one hand, it would put her in the front rank of people to eliminate when covering one’s tracks. _First, shoot the messenger_. That was the adage around these parts. But on the other, it would give her a window into a system of secrets. The secrets that were moving the Empire into its next era.

She offers a smile. “Probably.” 

His hand squeezes her shoulder lightly and then he steps out of the lift, robe swishing gently against the floor. “I look forward to finding out,” he tells her. 

The doors close behind him. Somehow Adea suspects if she presses the button to open them, they would refuse to respond to her. She sends the lift down to the row where her quarters are housed instead. 

At the far end of that hallway is a separate wing: the Grand Admiral’s quarters. When Adea exits the lift, she pauses to look down that way, where the lines of light on the walls seem to converge.

Sloane always asked for thoroughness from Adea. And that could mean direct obedience, but it could also mean taking opportunities when they came. Surely nothing would please her more than to have eyes on a potential rival. Because Sloane didn’t simply dislike Rax. She fixated on him, a huntress always keeping her mark in sight. 

_Just you wait, Rae. I’ll deliver the best gift you could imagine to your door, if you want me to._ Adea's eyes narrow. _As long as you recognize what it’s worth._

She stops by the trash receptacle on her way back and tosses the remnants of the comb down the chute, to be spat out into space as dust joining the nebula clouds.


End file.
